By Romeo San Vicente
Photo: Focus Features
Big-screen beckons Neil Patrick Harris
While hosting this year's Tony Awards, Neil Patrick Harris joked about his second-class status as a "TV guy." But he's already proven he's hilarious on the big screen in the "Harold & Kumar" movies, so now that second-tier status is about to change with two new film projects on the horizon. Harris has joined the cast of "Beastly," the new film from gay director Daniel Barnz ("Phoebe in Wonderland") that Romeo's already reported on here, but the "How I Met Your Mother" star will also be playing a lead role in "The Best and the Brightest." Harris plays a husband – way to break that gay-actor-curse NPH – from Delaware whose wife goes bananas about social status when they move to New York City and try to get their kid into an elite kindergarten. Amy Sedaris, John Hodgman and Kate Mulgrew also star in the latter; both movies should hit theaters before the end of 2010.
'Brokeback' spouses reunite
Granted, the romance between Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway in "Brokeback Mountain" was a tragic one involving the closet and deception and death, but these actors are determined to give it another go in a movie where he won't be playing a gay cowboy. "Love and Other Drugs" will feature Gyllenhaal as a pharmaceutical sales rep for Pfizer during the time when a revolutionary little blue pill was hitting the market (the film is based on the book "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman") while Hathaway will play a woman with Parkinson's with whom he begins a relationship after they meet on a sales call. Ed Zwick ("Glory," "Defiance") is set to direct, with shooting set to happen possibly as early as this fall. A movie about Viagra may make audiences stand at attention, but if the film lasts more than four hours, please, call your doctor.
Sanctity of marriage, reality-TV style
Listen up, gay people, American society is sick and tired of you militants trying to redefine what marriage means. It is a holy union that hasn't changed one teeny-tiny bit over 5,000 years, and it needs to be protected. And what better way to showcase what Miss California calls old-school "opposite" marriage than to feature it on reality television? Fox will soon be giving us "I Married a Stranger," in which a woman weds a man chosen for her by friends and family but doesn't meet him until he reaches the altar, while CBS offers "Arranged Marriage," which features the same set-up but follows the couple's lives after the nuptials. Both pilots have a good chance of getting picked up as mid-season replacements. Aren't you glad heterosexuals are doing such a great job of defending their most sacred institution?
How to make a monster musical
More and more movies are being made from popular childhood toys, from dolls ("Kit Kittredge: An American Girl") to action figures ("Transformers") to even board games ("Clue"). But now we're getting a movie musical based on a toy that doesn't even exist yet and will presumably be marketed alongside the film itself. Gay super-producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are reuniting with "Hairspray" composer-lyricist Marc Shaiman and lyricist Scott Wittman to make an original screen musical around an as-yet-unnamed Mattel monster toy. Everything's being kept very much on the hush-hush, but the one thing that's been revealed is that the property will "add a fresh twist to monster lore." No word yet on when this new musical will go into production, but Romeo bets five bucks that if the movie and the toy do well, an eventual Broadway adaptation is inevitable. And TV show. And more toys. And sequels. And …
